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Comment by kennend3 | Hacker News Reader

Notice it is also missing many other "offensive" terms like :

"Settler" - It actually uses this word a lot in its definitions as to why words are bad, but "Settler" itself is an offensive term used by First Nations against "whites".

"White privilege" is also missing? Again another harmful word thrown around which many consider offensive. Words which include "Everyone" are generally not good because within "white people" there is a wide range of thoughts/beliefs. I'm sure that very poor white people don't feel they have "white privilege"?

When asked to define "white privilege" the SJW's fail miserably.

At the end of the day, given Stanford is in the US and has "first amendment rights" this list itself is utter nonsense.

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This is an inane and deliberately obtuse response to this policy.

There is a vast difference between terms used by marginalised groups to refer to dominant ones, and terms used by dominant groups to refer to marginalised ones.

Whether or not this policy itself is effective or well-considered, the broader mission to identify ways in which historic injustice is ingrained and perpetuated through our language and try to amend it is a noble one.

There are many words throughout history that have been common place but carried so much cultural baggage that they became damaging and were thus abandoned - most terms we now consider slurs were once defended with arguments of similar merits to your own.

The process of improving our language is never going to be an easy one, no doubt many found it challenging to fully excise many of our abandoned terms from their vocabulary, but it's been done before, and will likely be done indefinitely into the future unless we ever reach a point of such equality that our language can no longer cause harm.

Sure there's a difference, but not for the purpose of this discussion. The term 'settler' is basically a slur used to marginalize people who pass as white in North America. So it should receive the same treatment as these other offensive terms.

> The process of improving our language

Political Correctness is not improving language, it's forcing people to be afraid of what they're saying, thus thinking.

> that our language can no longer cause harm.

Language does not cause harm. Emotionally immature people do.

The policy itself is inane and deliberately obtuse, why would the response be any different?

What you've described is essentially Newspeak. I won't be part of any effort to purge language, and I don't believe that doing so will socially engineer a better society, nor do I believe in such attempts to social engineer. I also don't believe words are harmful unless they're used in a harmful manner, and a majority of the words on Stanford's list not used in such a manner, being just part of every day language.

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